Tuesday, March 21, 2017

The Review: Hap And Leonard Season 1

Hap
And Leonard 9/10

I had
seen that Netflix had this Sundance Channel produced series called
Hap And Leonard and ignored it for a couple months. Seriously, the
name of the show alone made it sound like some show about rednecks.
Even the description seemed uninteresting to me. Then I saw that
Michael K. Williams was in it and decided to give it a chance not
knowing that it is based off a series of books or anything. This show
is ridiculously good. Its about two guys named Hap and Leonard.
Williams plays Leonard Pine who is a gay Vietnam vet and Hap Collins
is a draft dodger played by James Purefoy. They are best friends who
are very different from one another but their friendship seems so
real. They have the kind of chemistry that people on other shows and
movies can only dream of.

This
season centers around the return of Hap's ex wife Trudy played by
Christina Hendricks showing up out of the blue with the opportunity
to make a lot of money. By the way, Hendricks is one of the most
beautiful women on the planet. Even when she is wearing frumpy
clothes and her hair is a nightmare I could not stop admiring her.
Anyhoot, her new husband Howard knows of some money that was left in
a car that fell into a lake years ago. They meet up with him and he
is spouting a lot of hippy bullshit that Leonard, who fought in the
war, has no desire to listen to. Hap and Leonard end up doing most of
the work swimming, battling alligators, racism. All kind of shit.

During
the episodes they show some flashbacks of Hap as a child and you get
glimpses of how he was raised as well as his journey through prison
after deciding not to fight in the war. There is also Leonard's
homophobic uncle who is his only family left that keeps getting
arrested for trying to swindle the stores. There is also these two
lunatics named Soldier and Angel played by Jimmi Simpson and
Pollyanna McIntosh. They are fucking insane and I went from thinking
they were weird and quirky, to evil, to straight up needing them to
die before this season ended because they were too fucked up to
exist. I got too emotionally invested in this damned show and its
only six episodes.

I
intentionally spread this out because there are so few episodes and
was so happy to find out that a new season just started last week. I
left out quite a few spoilers because I want people that read this to
be as shocked as I was while watching this. I also read that this
season was written and directed by very few people which helped it
keep a consistent tone throughout. This show has a perfect amount of
mystery, violence, humor, action, suspense, and drama. I seriously
recommend seeing this.